If you listened to what Ralph Nader had to say on the Sunday weekly telly
shows, it becomes obvious why he has nothing good to say about Al Gore.
Nader, a pure-bred socialist if there ever was one, considers Gore to
be as beholden to corporate power as the Republican candidate. Therefore,
a victory by Gore would set back Nader's plan to build a true socialist
third party.

With
a Bush victory, it would be much easier to energize and organize left-wingers
in America around Nader's Green Party. To young college socialists, Nader
is a hero and totally independent of corporate power. Those energized
college students are the people Nader is counting on to help him build
a strong progressive political movement for the long haul. A Gore victory
would muddy up the dialectic. A Bush victory would make the dialectical
process clear and definitive. Bush, representing capitalism, would be
the thesis, Nader, representing socialism, the antithesis, and the battle
would be joined. Nader's battle cry will be, "Are the people going
to run this country or the corporations going to run it?"

The corporations and commercialism in general will be the bad guys, and
government bureaucrats working for "the people" will be the
good guys. Of course, what Nader fails to mention is that a vast number
of "the people" are dependent on the corporations for their
jobs and careers. And, in fact, it is the small businesses, or small corporations,
that are now creating more jobs than the big ones.

But Nader's attack on corporations is meant to simplify the political
rhetoric. America is more than just the big corporations, which incidentally
must produce products that people want in order to stay in business. If
they do anything that harms people, they could soon be out of business.
A good case in point is what is happening to Firestone, once a name renowned
for quality tires. Someone in that corporation decided to change the way
they make tires. Perhaps the justification for the new method was that
it cut the cost of production. But those tires have caused deadly accidents
for which the company is being held totally responsible. Firestone will
not only be required to pay for its production error, but may never again
regain its reputation for quality. That's a high price to pay for corporate
error.

On the other hand, government bureaucracies and enterprises may create
untold hardships for people, but they are never called to account for
the misery they cause. Take for example, the public schools, all government
enterprises, that have turned millions of perfectly normal children into
dyslexics and functional illiterates. The victims have no recourse against
the system that has ruined their lives. But Ralph Nader doesn't seem to
care about the victims of government malpractice. Only private corporations
are villains in his scheme of things.

Thus, even though the historical record proves that socialist and communist
governments have produced far more misery than the private corporations,
Nader is willing to pursue a political philosophy that is incapable of
providing people with happiness, economic growth and prosperity, and individual
freedom. Individual freedom cannot be divorced from economic freedom.
And that is why America has emerged as the greatest economic engine in
the history of the world. It is the combination of economic freedom and
individual freedom that has produced the world's highest standard of living,
and the foundation of both is private property.

Most of the great corporations are based on the inventions of individuals.
High-tech communications started with Samuel B. Morse, Alexander Graham
Bell, and Gugliemo Marconi. These corporations have not only improved
our lives, but produced enormous wealth for thousands if not millions
of stockholders. The fact that they are private obliges them to take on
enormous ethical responsibilities. Private ownership is what makes all
of the progress we've seen possible.

Look at what socialism did to Russia, probably the richest country in
the world when it comes to natural resources and land. Socialism impoverished
the people, created more pollution than would have been caused by responsible
private enterprise, enslaved millions of innocent people to work in gold
and uranium mines in Siberia to provide their socialist masters with the
foreign currency needed to keep the system afloat.

The most important ingredient of a free society is private property.
The Clinton-Gore administration has done all in its power to undermine
the legal system that protects private property. Extreme environmental
laws have rendered private property rights null and void. Environmental
regulations now deprive property owners of the right to manage their own
property in their own interests. And when Gore tells us, "You ain't
seen nothing yet," we can expect more regulations undermining private
ownership. Socialists are never satisfied with the status quo. They will
use whatever power they gain to expand their control over private property.

In Great Britain, the Fabian Socialists made it very plain what their
aim was. In their Credo published in 1887, they wrote: "The Fabian
Society consists of Socialists. . . . It aims at the reorganization of
society by the emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual
and class ownership, and the vesting of them in the community for the
general benefit . The Society accordingly works for the extinction
of private property in land." In 1895, there appeared in Boston a
new monthly journal called "The American Fabian." The editors
wrote:

We call our paper "The American Fabian" because our politics
must in a measure differ from those of the English Fabians. . . . England's
(unwritten) Constitution readily admits of constant though gradual modification.
Our American Constitution does not readily admit of such change. England
can thus move into Socialism almost imperceptibly. Our Constitution being
largely individualistic must be changed to admit of Socialism, and each
change necessitates a political crisis.

And so, the socialists early on recognized that our Constitution was
a bulwark against socialism, and therefore it would have to be utterly
changed before they could realize their socialist dream. Our Constitution
has provided Americans with the legal security needed to protect private
property. But the socialists have found in the environmental movement
the means to undermine the principles of private ownership. That is why
Nader calls his movement the Green Party, not the Socialist Party.

Of course, the Fabians wrote of their socialist plans back in the days
before communism and socialism had a chance to prove themselves in practice.
One hundred years later, it's hard to understand how a Ralph Nader can
still go around peddling this totally discredited philosophy. It's also
hard to understand how so many American college students can be taken
in by such a failed philosophy. Perhaps the reason is that there are so
many Marxist professors in our colleges and universities who are skilled
at seducing idealistic students into accepting socialism, even though
we know it doesn't work.

In any case, according to Nader, the problem with Gore is that he owes
too much to his corporate contributors to be able to carry out the socialist
agenda with any zeal. There may be a Republican dominated Congress to
contend with, where left-wing Democrats will need to engage in dialectical
warfare. Nader has also criticized vice presidential candidate Lieberman
as being too pro-corporation because Connecticut has insurance companies,
drug companies, and defense contractors.

Nader has no illusions that socialists can win a national election. He
knows that the only way to move America further leftward is to create
the kind of dialectical conflict that only the Green Party is capable
of. That's why a Bush victory makes better sense to him than a Gore presidency.

Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education, including,
"NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education," "The Whole-Language/OBE
Fraud," and "Homeschooling: A Parents Guide to Teaching Children."
These books and others are available on Amazon.com.